


The One Bright Light (in This Rotten City)

by 1ichens



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Justice (Dragon Age) Positive, Pro-mage Hawke, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1ichens/pseuds/1ichens
Summary: Hawke finds Anders glowing in her bed.
Relationships: Anders/Female Hawke, Anders/Hawke (Dragon Age)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	The One Bright Light (in This Rotten City)

The Amell manor was too big for their little household in the daytime. When Hawke got up past midnight to wash the old Ostagar dream back out of her mouth, it was dark and silent as a tomb. Silence had never meant safety, not on the farm, not in the army, not in Lowtown—whatever else you might say about Lowtown. So she stood in her own kitchen like a burglar, swilling wine with her danger senses prickling.

Like hell she’d let her guard down here, let this place dull her nerves...that’s how you’d go soft up here, wasn’t it. How they’d get you. All very paranoid, but _just because you’re paranoid_ and so on and so forth. The stupidity of the whole thing made her headache worse. She left the bottle on the sideboard and padded down the drafty corridor, licking her teeth.

Back upstairs, she found her lover glowing faintly, tangled in their sheets. Blue limned the slope of his shoulder, traced branching figures down his back, disappeared under the coverlet. He seemed to float oddly in midair, the darkened bedroom black by contrast. Lisi paused a moment, leaning on the door frame, watching the flicker and pulse of whatever currents stirred the gelid light beneath his skin.

These fluctuations did not keep in time with his breath; they had no rhythm that could have matched his heartbeat. If they followed any pattern, there was nothing discernibly human about it. But there _was_ a pattern, wasn’t there? She could see it through his jutting shoulder blades, where a fissure in the world had opened up. Some meaning in the shifting light...something to understand…

A throb of her headache broke the fascination. She squeezed her eyes shut, smiling at the Anders-shaped afterglow behind her lids. _Confounding man._ He didn’t stir when the bed shifted under her weight, so she eased up against his back and wrapped herself around him—carefully. He slept so little when the work was getting on.

This close, even she could feel the Fadestuff that suffused him. _Magic._ It came to her through senses that she’d never known she had, until the first time Anders glowed and she stood close enough to kiss him—the silent singing light that wasn’t light, its beauty alien in a way she had no words for. But then, she’d never been the best with words. He sighed in his sleep, glowing a little brighter as he settled into her arms.

 _Be a problem if it ever happens on the road,_ noted the part of her mind that was always standing sentry. She put the thought away for later.

This close, again, he was warm and real. His gently masculine scent, bright with soap and elfroot; his skin supple beneath her lips. The brush of hair where she laid her hand along his chest, felt the swell and fall of his breathing. The sense of peace that seemed to flow from those blue cracks, the comfort of knowing all was as it should be—the presence of justice. It melted her headache away.

But all was not as it fucking should be. This rotten city, the anointed pricks who ran it, their legions of the selfish and the spiteful and the dull, any of them would snuff out her wondrous lover without a thought for…for what he _meant._ Justice with his crinkling eyes and crooked smile. Two beings added for a sum of one, the bad math so obvious, even his shape could barely hold together. It did her head in, all right, but he seemed so terribly improbable in her arms, so fragile in a world that didn’t want him, she loved him with an urgency that felt like rage. This radiant force who looked at her with such tender, anxious longing—she would rip their throats out with her teeth if they came for him.

The glow went abruptly dark.

“What is it?” His voice, low and alert. He woke as quick as she did—the soldier and the fugitive.

“Nothin, love.” She willed her body to relax. “Only me.”

He rolled to follow as she uncurled herself from around him, his hands seeking about for her, so she folded him back into her embrace.

 _Mmf,_ he murmured into her neck, the momentary alarm easing out of him too.

“’s all right, dearest, don’t wake up.” Her sweet, impossible, magic man. She stroked his hair. “You’re safe.”


End file.
